Sunday, January 13, 2008

The Prodigal Returns

My sister's flying back to the States today. Which is a perfectly good excuse for posting the photos from the day she arrived back in Singapore: Christmas day in the morning.

This is us, starting out from home at some godfuckinforsaken hour in the morning.

P I EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

My father having his breakfast in Terminal One.

My mother, being less than glamorous.

Anyway, E-Ching came back safe and sound and I was so happy to see her I didn't take pictures till we got home:

And she had to make amends with the cat, whom she'd abandoned for so long.

The way to this cat's heart is through her stomach.

NOM NOM NOM.

E-Ching's been doing her PhD in Linguistics at Yale. She's been dissecting my parents' use of tones in Hokkien and quizzing my niece on her use of the suffix particle "one".

The advantage of having a big sister in the States is that you can avoid Amazon shipping fees by getting stuff mailed to her. Lookit this pile of indie pulp! (The package in the centre is my Xmas pressie.)

Time to slay the fatted calf!

I LOVE STUFFING. And my sister loves cornbread. What a happy family we are.

And spoon it in! (Honest, I was doing this too, not just Yuli, who's my grandmother's Indonesian caretaker.)

After stuffing, we keep the turkey moist by swaddling it in haram, haram BACON. It's held in place with satay sticks.MEAT.MEEAAATT. To be honest, I overcooked the bird, but it was still pretty juicy. Time to lay the table!

That's my Mum in her Burberry's.

Keropok, or Malay prawn crackers. (Yes, we treat Christmas as a Western tradition, but we're not purists.)French beans with gravy stock carrots.

Bacon, the candy of meats. It gets crisped while you're roasting the turkey. Sacrificial protection.

Nameless Indonesian crackers made from obscure nuts and eaten with coconut syrup. (My parents had just been to Bali and picked up a mess of these things.) [Update: it turns out that they're emping, made from belinjo nuts.]

STUFFIN'.

And da turkey.

I reiterate: are we not a happy family?

My father has a habit of disrobing at dinner. Never mind, it's time for unwrapping anyway.

Yuli and Ida rip open the books I bought for them while my grumpy grandma looks on.

And it's also one of our Christmas traditions to allow the dogs into the living room to enjoy our company. (I know it's really wrong religiously, but the maids actually love the dogs very much. I bet they'd rather they were cleaner though.